Friday, August 11, 2017

History Rewritten - 7

I travelled about five miles through old plantations, now under grass, but appeared to have been planted the last season; the soil exceeding fertile, loose, black, deep and fat. I arrived at Cowe about noon; this settlement is esteemed the capital town; it is situated on the bases of the hills on both sides of the river, near to its bank, and here terminates the great vale of Cowe, exhibiting one of the most charming natural mountainous landscapes perhaps any where to be seen; ridges of hills rising grand and sublimely one above and beyond another, some boldly and majestically advancing into the verdant plain, their feet bathed with the silver flood of the Tanase whilst others far distant, veiled in blue mists, sublimely mount aloft, with yet greater majesty lift up their pompous crests and overlook vast regions.

- William Bartram, May 1775

In a letter to Ralph Waldo Emerson,
the British essayist Thomas Carlyle commended Bartram’s Travels for “a wondrous kind of floundering eloquence in it.” Wordsworth and Coleridge were also captivated
and inspired by the accounts of the Philadelphia botanist.

Now, in the 21st century,
as someone who frequents the upper Little Tennessee Valley, I find it a great
joy to see these same landscapes through the eyes of William Bartram. The Cowee Valley, north of present-day
Franklin, NC, was a highlight of Bartram’s visit to western North Carolina.

"Cherokees Are As Ignorant As We Are"

Bartram described in some detail the
Cherokee village that sprawled along the river, and also the Cowee Mound,
topped by a spacious town-house:

The council or town-house is a large rotunda, capable of accommodating several hundred people; it stands on the top of an ancient artificial mount of earth, of about twenty feet perpendicular, and the rotunda on the top of it being above thirty feet more, gives the whole fabric an elevation of about sixty feet from the common surface of the ground. But it may be proper to observe that this mount on which the rotunda stands is of a much more ancient date than the building, and perhaps was raised for another purpose.

The Cherokees themselves are as ignorant as we are by what people or for what purpose these artificial hills were raised; they have various stories concerning them, the best of which amount to no more than mere conjectures, and leave us entirely in the dark; but they have a tradition, common with the other nations of Indians, that they found them in much the same condition as they now appear, when their forefathers arrived from the west and possessed themselves of the country, after vanquishing the nations of red men who then inhabited it, who themselves found these mounts when they took possession of the country, the former possessors delivering the same story concerning them. Perhaps they were designed and appropriated by the people who constructed them to some religious purpose, as great altars and temples similar to the high places and sacred groves anciently among the Canaanites and other nations of Palestine and Judea.

This
passage is intriguing for what it suggests about the predecessors of the
Cherokees in the Southern Appalachians, the comparatively late arrival of the
Cherokees, and their role (or lack of a role) in the construction of mounds.

Did
Bartram get it right? Was his source
qualified to speak with authority on such matters? Beyond a certain degree, of course, the
answers are unknowable. And even when
archaeology is paired with history as a tool of inquiry, post holes and pottery
shards only reveal so much.

"From Time Immemorial"

After
revisiting the preceding paragraph from Bartram I stumbled upon its
counterpoint, attributed to Major John Norton, who travelled among the
Cherokees ca. 1809:

Generally throughout the Nation,
emigration was unpopular, and exchanging countries still more so. They said, that to the country they now possessed, they had an indisputable right, from their ancestors who had possessed it from
time immemorial . . .

I wish I could dig into the context
for the Norton quote. His journal was
not published until 1970 and is not widely available (without shelling out
ninety bucks for a copy). I was not
familiar with Major Norton, but he is an interesting character (see note
below). His quote appeared as an
epigraph on a brochure for a 2014 Cherokee ArchaeologicalSymposium. As I examined the brochure,
feelings of anger, sadness and nausea welled up. Rather than launching into a rant, though, I’ll
just say it bothers me to see archaeological expertise subverted to advance a
particular political agenda.

In that regard, the phrase “time
immemorial” is of such significance that I will need to devote a future
installment of this series to it.

When influential people have a
particular axe to grind, they’ll go to great lengths to manipulate evidence of
what actually occurred in the past.
That’s certainly what has happened in the aftermath of a federal law
enacted in 1990.

The Native American Graves Protection
and Repatriation Act (NAGPRA), requires federal agencies and institutions that
receive federal funding to return Native American cultural items (including
human remains, funerary objects, sacred objects) to lineal descendants and
culturally affiliated Indian tribes.
NAGPRA also establishes procedures for the inadvertent discovery or
planned excavation of Native American cultural items on federal or tribal
lands.

To the extent that grave robbers
desecrated native burial sites and showed something less than respect for human
remains, the intent of NAGPRA was worthwhile.
But like other well-meaning legislation, NAGPRA has had unintended
consequences.

Problems With NAGPRA

At best, repatriation of cultural
items under the law becomes a cumbersome and costly bureaucratic process. And there’s this:

The statute attempts to mediate a
significant tension that exists between the tribes' communal interests in the
respectful treatment of their deceased ancestors and related cultural items and
the scientists' individual interests in the study of those same human remains
and items….

Archeologists are concerned that they
are being prevented from studying ancient remains which cannot be traced to any
historic tribe. Many of the tribes migrated to their territories at the time of
European encounter within 100–500 years from other locations, so their
ancestors were not located in the historic territories….

Fears have been voiced that an
anti-scientific sentiment could well have permeated politics to an extent that
scientists might find their work to be continuously barred by Native Americans
rights activists….

Compliance with the legislation can be
complicated. One example of controversy is that of Kennewick Man, a skeleton
found in 1996 near Kennewick, Washington. The federally recognized Umatilla,
Colville, Yakima, and Nez Perce tribes had each claimed Kennewick Man as their
ancestor, and sought permission to rebury him. Kennewick, Washington is
classified as part of the ancestral land of the Umatilla.

Archaeologists said that because of
Kennewick Man's great age, there was insufficient evidence to connect him to
modern tribes. The great age of the remains makes this discovery scientifically
valuable. As archaeologists, forensic specialists, and linguists differed about
whether the adult male was of indigenous origin, the standing law, if
conclusively found by a preponderance of evidence to be Native American, would
give the tribe of the geographic area where he was found a claim to the
remains. New evidence could still emerge in defense of tribal claims to
ancestry, but emergent evidence may require more sophisticated and precise
methods of determining genetic descent, given that there was no cultural
evidence accompanying the remains.

One tribe claiming ancestry to
Kennewick Man offered up a DNA test, and in 2015 it was found that the
Kennewick man is "more closely related to modern Native Americans than any
other living population." In September 2016, the US House and Senate
passed legislation to return the ancient bones to a coalition of Columbia Basin
tribes for reburial according to their traditions. The coalition includes the
Confederated Tribes of the Colville Reservation, the Confederated Tribes and
Bands of the Yakama Nation, the Nez Perce Tribe, the Confederated Tribes of the
Umatilla Reservation, and the Wanapum Band of Priest Rapids. The remains were
buried on February 18, 2017, with 200 members of five Columbia Basin tribes, at
an undisclosed location in the area.

It is understandable that any tribal
organization wishing to claim custody to skeletal remains in their proximity
would want to build the case that they have occupied the area for thousands,
rather than few hundred, years.

A Bone to Pick

It gets complicated.

An essay by Janet Levy in Anthropologists
and Indians in the New South describes her experiences as an archaeologist in
the Carolinas, both pre- and post-NAGPRA.
While conducting rescue excavation necessitated by construction at a
Yancey County junior high school in
1990, Levy witnessed the problems that can arise:

A burial had been recovered at the
site, and negotiations legally mandated by the 1981 [North Carolina] Burial
Bill had taken place. However, a group
of individuals who had identified themselves as Indians had gathered in the
town to protest the excavation of the site overall, claiming it was sacred
ground….None of the protestors were Cherokee tribal members; some were from
outside the state, and as far as we know, none were members of another
federally or state-recognized tribe.
Nevertheless, they were quite successful in garnering positive media
attention and support from some other, non-Indian, groups in the region.

It is probably lucky for me and
archaeology in North Carolina that I was not the person responsible for
interacting with the protestors. My anger
and frustration levels were very high…

Although, during this encounter,
various threats were made to stop archaeology in North Carolina forever, little
came of those statements. None of the
remaining suspected burials were excavated, and later the one excavated burial
was reburied under the mandates of the Burial Bill.

Levy went on to describe events at a
Macon County site being prepared for an industrial park in 1995. Though the Eastern Band of Cherokees was
contacted and expressed no objections to the excavation, a religious faction
within the tribe protested the work.

Excavations continued but were
interrupted and modified by ongoing demands and negotiations; again, there were
some verbal challenges to excavators, many of them community and student volunteers. The situation was complicated by ongoing
political competition within the tribal government and by the political needs
and concerns of the county government, which was sponsoring the industrial
development. Ultimately, significant
parts of the site were cleared and mapped, but not excavated.

After discussing other experiences and
her hopes for positive outcomes from the federal law, Levy observed:

NAGPRA shifted the distribution of
power in the discipline of archaeology in North America….Problems arise because
of factionalism within, and competition between, Indian communities, including
local, non-local, and pan-Indian organizations….And there are ongoing tensions
in some situations between federally recognized tribes and state-recognized groups….Ironically,
perhaps, NAGPRA has encouraged archaeologists to become better anthropologists,
because we now have to struggle to understand the cultural values, social
organization, and political structure of communities other than our own.

Lost Clues

When the mounds and associated sites
in the Southern Appalachians were plundered in the 19th century, we
lost many clues to understanding the past.
In the name of cultural sensitivity, NAGPRA has mandated the “return” of
the human remains of approximately 32,000 individuals, nearly 670,000 funerary
objects, 120,000 unassociated funerary objects, and 3,500 sacred objects (to date). How does the loss of this evidence impede our
ability to understand the past? And
who’s to say that some of these items, surrendered to various tribes per
NAGPRA, haven’t been diverted for sale on the black market?

Sometimes, being able to see the world
through the eyes of a William Bartram is a very good thing indeed. It certainly inspired one of Coleridge’s
best known works:

John Norton was likely born in
Scotland in the early 1760s to a Scottish mother and a father born Cherokee in
Tennessee and raised from boyhood in England. His father had been rescued as a
boy by British soldiers when his hometown of Keowee (Tennessee) was destroyed
during the French and Indian War, the North American front of the Seven Years'
War. The boy was taken back to England and raised in an English family. John
Norton was likely educated as a boy in Scotland…

He served an apprenticeship as a
printer, but ran away to join the army. He was assigned to Scotland… Next he
was stationed in Ireland… In 1785 he was assigned to Lower Canada (Quebec)
after the end of the American Revolutionary War….

While stationed with his regiment at
Niagara (Upper Canada) in 1787, Norton deserted the army and was discharged.
For a time, he taught at the Mohawk settlement of Tyendinaga on the Bay of
Quinte, west of Kingston, Ontario. In 1791 he traveled through the Ohio region
as a trader, establishing many contacts….

During this time, he became
increasingly involved with the Iroquois Six Nations of the Grand River. In
1794, he returned to Fort Niagara, where he served as an interpreter for the
British Indian department. He became known to Joseph Brant, the prominent
Mohawk people leader who became his mentor. In his early 30s, Norton was
adopted into the Mohawk, with Brant as his uncle….

He was given the Mohawk name of
Teyoninhokovrawen to mark this passage…. He married Catherine, a woman from one
of the six Iroquois nations….

Later he was appointed a "Pine
Tree Chief," in a public ceremony, according to Iroquois custom. This was
an honorary position and was not within the hereditary line….

In 1809-1810 Norton had a lengthy trip
to the American Southeast, where he traveled through the still extensive
Cherokee territory, in part to try to find his father's people. He did meet
relatives and was accepted as Cherokee. The people were under pressure from
land encroachment by settlers and state governments, particularly Georgia. He
kept detailed accounts of what he saw and described Cherokee towns and culture
in his The Journal of Major John Norton, 1816…..

Norton led a handful of Six Nations
warriors into battle in Tecumseh's offensive in 1811 against the Americans at
Tippecanoe. When the War of 1812 between Britain and the United States began,
Norton was quick to join General Isaac Brock at Detroit, despite the official neutrality
of the Canadian Six Nations. Following Brock's success at Detroit, more Six
Nations warriors joined the British forces as allies. Their timely arrival at
Queenston Heights, under the leadership of Major Norton, John Brant (Joseph's
son), and Lieutenant Kerr of the Indian Department, was crucial to British
victory….

Norton's final years are a mystery.
There were suggestions that he had left Canada and moved as far as Laredo,
Mexico. His date of death is unknown but his last mention in records was in 1826.